Also

* A federal judge appointed two Ohio pension funds to lead shareholder securities-fraud lawsuits against Global Crossing Ltd.

* Yahoo Inc. said it had laid off an unspecified number of workers in its broadcasting-services division as part of the firm’s financial makeover.

* Gateway Inc., a Poway, Calif., maker of personal computers, is linking idle PCs in its stores and selling their computing power to businesses after eight straight quarterly sales declines. The service will use 8,000 demonstration PCs in 274 Gateway stores.